


Consummation

by thedevilchicken



Category: The King (2019)
Genre: (But not between Hal and the Dauphin), Alternate Universe - Arranged Marriage, Alternate Universe - Different First Meeting, Anal Sex, Blow Jobs, Felching, Infidelity, M/M, Rimming
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-25
Updated: 2020-12-25
Packaged: 2021-03-10 19:07:26
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,895
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28312092
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thedevilchicken/pseuds/thedevilchicken
Summary: When their father dies, Thomas takes the throne and arranges a marriage to Louis, the Dauphin, to avert war with France.Thomas has no interest in Louis. Hal, as it happens, does.
Relationships: The Dauphin/Henry V of England
Comments: 1
Kudos: 19
Collections: Yuletide Madness 2020





	Consummation

**Author's Note:**

  * For [spock](https://archiveofourown.org/users/spock/gifts).



"Did you set out today to bed your brother's husband?" Louis asks. 

He's teasing and Hal knows it, because they both know who initiated this and it categorically wasn't Hal. Even if they weren't both perfectly aware, though, he'd know he's being teased; Louis is lying naked in Hal's bed, stretched out on his side with his head propped up on one fine hand like the prettiest of obscene royal portraiture, and the smile that's on his face and in his eyes says he's playing a game. 

Hal has just never been entirely sure if it's a game they play with or against each other. 

\---

Today was his brother's wedding. 

Hal rose earlier than usual. He washed and he put on moderately appropriate clothing and he attended the wedding of Henry, King of England, to Louis, Dauphin of France. It seemed oddly fitting, he thought, as he watched the ceremony taking place, that his brother who had taken his name at his coronation had taken his ex-lover in marriage. For all that Thomas had always so vociferously maintained that he didn't want to be him, he'd certainly staked interesting claims. 

Today was his brother's wedding. And afterwards, once they'd withdrawn from the cathedral to the palace, Hal had set about the serious business of getting drunk. 

"Why did you come if this was how you'd behave?" Thomas asked him. 

"Why did you invite me when you knew I wouldn't behave any differently?" Hal replied. 

He remembers the disgusted look on his brother's face, as if he took Hal's behaviour as a personal insult in a way their father never really had. He remembers the amused look on his brother's husband's face as he raised his cup like a toast to him behind Thomas' back. And Hal would swear he wasn't jealous but he also understood he couldn't breathe the same air as the two of them for one single moment longer. 

"I should go," Hal said. 

"Yes, you should," Thomas replied. 

"Don't I at least get a dance?" Louis asked. 

Both brothers looked at him sharply. "Perhaps that is the French tradition," Thomas said, with very near as much disgust as he'd shown Hal, "but men do not dance with men in England." And somehow, when Hal met Louis' gaze, he understood two things: firstly, that he remained entirely unconcerned by his new spouse's utter lack of affection or respect, and secondly, that he wasn't asking Hal to dance. He was telling him that he remembered another night when they already had. 

He'd left then, amusing himself wryly on the walk back into Eastcheap with the thought of his little brother married to a man like Louis. Dispensation from the Church for men to marry was granted only somewhat rarely and Thomas had never shown any interest in that direction, unlike the family's black sheep; it was a political marriage arranged to avert war with France after their father's death, not to make Thomas happy. Hal chuckled to himself, still pleasantly warm with drink, and considered that the match might have made himself happier than his brother. Not by much, he supposed, because he saw no reason to believe Louis had changed in any way since they'd last met. But at least the idea of sharing a bed with men in general and this man in particular didn't make him slightly green around the gills. 

He'd drunk some more after that, in a tavern and then in his rooms alone. At some point, he'd taken off his clothes and gone to bed. When the door opened in the dark long before dawn, he was still naked and half drunk and read to curse Falstaff's name to the very ends and extents of time when he understood the interruption to his sleep was not, in fact, Sir John Falstaff. It was a man in a long cloak with a hem that swept the floor, the hood of which obscured his face but in its general aspect did nothing to hide its wearer's identity: the cloak was made from red velvet the colour of a good French wine, and it was not discreet at all. As such, when the hood was drawn back and Louis' face revealed, Hal was entirely unsurprised. What did surprise him, at least moderately, was that when Louis cast the cloak back from his shoulders and let it drop onto the floor, he was naked underneath it except for his boots. 

"Is that the new French fashion?" Hal asked, as he sat himself up. He was still naked himself, except for the twisted sheets covering his dubious virtue. "It's going to cause a scandal at court." 

Louis snorted. He came closer to the bed, just boots and long hair and the rings on his finger, and though that should have seemed ridiculous there was that same old amused air of confidence to him that said perhaps it was a joke but not at his own expense. 

"We are of course more daring in our choices than you English," Louis said, cocking his head. "But I wore this for you." He raised his arms out to his sides and turned a slow, thoroughly exhibitionist circle. "Do you not like it?"

"Has my brother's bed already ceased to tempt you?"

"Your brother's bed tempts his mistress."

"So you've come to consummate your marriage vows with me instead?"

Louis laughed. The sound was just as rich and filled with delight and edge with mockery as Hal remembered, and though he would have liked to have blamed his lingering drunkenness for the way his insides seemed to coil up like a noose, he understood that it was not the reason. Louis didn't reply, though; he just came closer still, to the side of the bed where Hal had been dozing, and he stood there in the warm light of the lantern he'd clearly brought with him, naked and unselfconscious about that fact. He'd been that way throughout the entirety of their earlier acquaintance, Hal knew. In fact, he'd been stark naked the night they'd met. 

Hal turned and swung his legs over the side of the bed. He recalls being certain that he meant to do something but he has no idea what that was and supposes it matters very little as Louis stepped forward again. He wrinkled his nose as he cast his gaze down at the state of the floor and then he knelt down on it anyway. He tucked his hair back behind both ears with both his hands and looked up at him, perhaps aiming for coquettish but striking upon something else instead. 

"I remember how you taste, prince," he said, and he reached out to run his hands over Hal's bare things. 

"We were both princes then," Hal replied.

Louis' hands moved higher. His thumbs traced the creases where Hal's thighs met his body, His fingertips dipped down and skimmed his balls, just lightly, enough to make him shiver just like he supposed Louis had known he would. 

"Now I'm a king," Louis said. 

"King _consort_."

"All the same." He smiled as he brought his gaze up from between Hal's thighs back to his face. "Would you like to know what it is to have a king suck your cock, prince?"

He knows that he should have said no. There were a hundred ways in which he could have insulted him badly enough to send him storming back to the palace, and a hundred more than just said _not tonight_ so he could deal with this idiocy at a point when he wasn't awash with drink and lacking clothes. But he didn't say no because he didn't say anything at all; he'd like to believe that was because he'd reasoned it through internally and arrived at a logical conclusion based on the fact of Thomas' personal disdain for the match beneath his political pleasure, but...the truth is Louis was stroking his soft cock with the tip of one forefinger in a pseudo-innocent, pseudo-idle manner that Hal found so distracting that he couldn't think. And then he leaned in to tease him with the tip of his tongue. Hal was erect within seconds, which he doubts surprised either of them. 

Louis' mouth was hot and familiar as he took him in to seal his lips and suck, and he hummed around him approvingly in the same way he always had when Hal twisted his fingers into his hair. They'd met in Paris, at some incredibly lewd party or other - when Louis had swept naked from a bedroom and pointed at him, naked, hard, possibly drunk, and said in no uncertain terms that he wanted him, Hal had gone with him willingly. As Louis sucked him now, he understood that he was still just as willing as he'd ever been. 

Louis took him by the hips and pulled him closer to the edge of the bed. Louis took him deep, cheeks flushed and hollowed, so deep that his nose tickled at the base - a trick that Hal had so often tried to emulate to absolutely no success. His fingers gripped the sheets and he spread his thighs out wider, arched his back, rolled his hips and Louis chicken deeply as he dragged his tongue back up to the tip. And maybe it was the drink, or the fact that he'd never had a mouth on him half as talented as that of the heir to the throne of France, but all Hal could do was let his head drop back and his eyes close adn his lips part, let his hands tighten and his muscles jump, until he was biting his lip to keep from moaning out loud. All he could do was feel Louis' hands gripping his thighs and his mouth on his cock and the pricking, tingling pleasure that radiated from his tightening balls and up, out, through him, until he bucked his hips and spent himself in Louis' mouth. 

Louis didn't look particularly offended by this. He actually looked amused as he spat Hal's come out into one hand and pulled himself up onto his still shod feet and when he tilted his head and raised both of his eyebrows, still cupping Hal's come in one palm, he understood. He could have said no, he supposes, but there seemed to be no question of that as he turned and crawled up onto the mattress on his hands and knees. There was absolutely no question of that as Louis parted Hal's cheeks with one hand and ran two come-slicked fingers down his cleft. He rubbed there at the rim of his hole, tantalising and familiar, dipped one thumb down against it and pressed until Hal's hole relaxed enough to take it in. He felt himself squeeze around it, entirely involuntary but it seemed to please Louis. Then again, he couldn't think of a time in all those weeks he'd been in Paris, in all those weeks they'd screwed against walls and over tables, on a window seat overlooking a courtyard, _in_ that courtyard, when Louis hadn't enjoyed sex. 

When he withdrew, Hal understood what he was doing was slicking himself with the rest of Hal's come. When he pressed the thick tip of his cock against his hole, Hal understood he was about to enter him, and he can't deny he wanted it. He felt him do it, one hand keeping himself in place and the other resting infuriatingly lightly at the small of Hal's back, as he groaned and pressed himself inside. Hal felt it, semi-drunk as he was, Louis' cock opening him up, stretching him taut, making his breath catch as he filled him. He'd had bigger, he supposed, but Louis' cock was exactly as he remembered it: just on the right side of too large that it went in and made him moan instead of wince. His mouth twisted as he spread his knees a little wider and thought to himself just how unimpressed Thomas would be to know how fondly he remembered his brother's new husband's cock.

After a long moment, Louis began to move in him. He was still standing there behind him, Hal balancing on his knees on the edge of the mattress and kept there by the cock in his arse and the hands at his hips, and Louis pulled back just to shove back in with a groan. Hal's immediate neighbours would hardly be surprised, he thought, which was good because Louis had never been quiet. He was entirely unashamed, which frankly sometimes Hal only wished he could emulate. Then Louis moved again, _again_ , harder, faster, until skin slapped skin and bone jarred bone and Hal's knees dragged against the sheets and he was fucking him in earnest. Hal couldn't quite manage another erection, no, but that didn't mean his cock didn't attempt it and Louis' harsh breath and French curses and the way he gripped his hips just made Hal's breath short and his head spin. Louis fucked him with a kind of self-indulgent abandon that very few men could muster when their manhood was balls deep inside a prince. And when he came, entirely unconcerned with how he sounded, Louis didn't ask if he preferred he pull out, come against his back or between his thighs or just finish himself across the room. His cock pulsed inside Hal's hole as he emptied himself inside him. Hal didn't mind, but he wouldn't have bet on Louis caring either way. 

He didn't pull out immediately. He stayed there, softening inside him as their breath evened out and Hal had just started to wonder if he needed to ask him to move before his thighs cramped when Louis finally withdrew. He ran his fingers over Hal's pleasantly aching hole and made it pull tight, made their mixed semen leak a little, and Louis leaned in; Hal felt the puff of his hot breath against hi hole, his hands spreading him, then the unexpected thrill of his tongue there, lapping slowly. His cock twitched, and he bit his lip, and Louis eased him open just a little with both his thumbs so he could press his tongue inside and lick him clean. Hal could just imagine him, hair hanging forward against his skin, mocking face buried against his arse, lapping at his own come along with what of Hal's he'd used to slick him - it was heady and ridiculous and precisely like Louis had always been. And when he pulled away and Hal turned onto his back, he watched him take a swig of wine straight from the jug. Somehow, of all the things that Louis had just done, that seemed the most uncouth. 

Hal laughed and took the jug. Louis, for his part, gave him a look that said he shared his amusement as he finally sat down to take off his boots. 

After, Louis stretched out on the bed. Hal lay down beside him. And now here they are, wine-soaked and come-stained. It's been a strange reunion. 

\---

"Did you set out today to bed your brother's husband?" Louis asks, and part of Hal wants to say _yes_ and see what his reaction to that might be. Part of him wants to see if he can make Louis believe that all of this was just a grand manipulation. But Louis is far from a fool for all his foibles and Hal is many things, but he is not a liar. If this is a game, then Louis wins. 

"That wasn't at the forefront of my mind, no," Hal says instead. Louis smiles and bites his bottom lip in something like delight, then he reaches out to push Hal's hair back from his forehead. He lets him, even if the gesture seems more intimate than anything else they've done tonight. It seems almost more intimate than anything they've ever done and he knows he should have done none of it. He loves his brother, after all - just in the long tradition of brothers, it turns out he doesn't necessarily like him very much. 

"You shouldn't be here," Hal says. 

"No," Louis replies. "I shouldn't." 

"Thomas would be scandalised."

"Of course."

"Is that the point or just an amusing side effect?" 

Louis' smile brightens. "I'll tell you when I decide," he says. Then he pats Hal's cheek and he pulls up the sheets. 

He doesn't ask if he's staying - it's almost dawn so he assumes he is. He doesn't point out that a red velvet cloak will do nothing to hide him in broad daylight so he'll either have to stay till dusk or borrow some of Hal's own clothes. He just turns onto his back and closes his eyes and feels the back of Louis' fingers brush against his hand. 

"Perhaps next time we can do this somewhere that doesn't smell like livestock," Louis says. "And I will bring you better wine." 

Hal doesn't reply, but he knows he doesn't need to. They both knew this isn't the end, because it's not even close to the beginning - it's just the next step in what began between them years ago. 

And the truth is, he's missed this. From the way that Louis' fingers brush his, he'd say he's missed it, too. 

He wonders which of them will admit it first. Or perhaps that's what this is.


End file.
